By Lateef Adebite
Russia remains a powerful force on the global stage. If not for its resilience, Ukraine, a much smaller neighbor caught in the middle of a geopolitical struggle involving the European Union, NATO, and the West, might have already seen its economy collapse and been forced to surrender.
Unknown to many, Vladimir Putin, President, and his Forces over the last three years have been fighting the EU and NATO Forces, which claimed to be on the sideline, in the guise of fighting Ukraine. The EU and NATO member countries, which comprised the North American country of the United States, US, United Kingdom, UK, and the 32 countries of the EU, have been involved in the war using Ukraine to test their newly produced weapons on Russia.
President Donald Trump had alluded to the fact that without US involvement and EU involvement in the over three-year-old war between the European countries, it would have been over long ago. He had alluded to the US and EU supply of defensive weapons to Ukraine just as the UK had supported the country with military advisers. Between former Presidents Obama and Joe Biden, the US had funded the Ukraine war to the tune of over $350 billion.
The EU and NATO member countries may not have come out openly to declare their involvement in the war to avoid giving room to Putin that he is fighting an undeclared WW3, that will force him to go back to the drawing board with his top security men to use stronger weapons in fighting Ukraine that may have spilled over to Europe.
Trump may have invited Putin to a meeting in Alaska, treated him with respect as he was given a red carpet to influence him to end the war, which was telling on the Ukrainian economy and killing the soldiers, forcing many of the soldiers to voluntarily resign while some of the able-bodied youths are leaving the country in droves to other parts of Europe including the UK and the US, to settle for fear of being killed or forced to join the army by Volodymyr Zelensky, who is desperate to win the war at all costs to justify the multi-billion dollar weapons supply and funds advanced to the country by the EU, US, and NATO to prosecute the war.
At the August 21 meeting of NATO, attended by Zelensky, where he had the opportunity of addressing the European leaders, he was said to have asked them to step up action against Russia or the war will spill over to all of Europe.
In an emotional outburst, he was said to have made the European leaders and the other NATO member countries at the meeting understand that he is not “only defending Ukraine but holding the frontline for Europe.”
This may have informed why NATO officials had come out to declare that they are “no longer on the sidelines.” But Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the EU, had warned member nations to stop thinking of going to war with Russia now as they would be roundly defeated.
The EU Secretary General, who could not hide his feelings, had Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France, Frederick Merz, Germany Chancellor, Sergio Mattarella, Italy, Alexander Stubb, Finland, Karol Nawrocki, Poland, and other European leaders who are still pushing Zelenskyy around to sustain the war that it is not possible to defeat Russia.
He was said to have made the European leaders understand that the quantity of drones and super hyper-sonic cruise missiles produced by Russia every three months is much more than the entire Europe produces annually, which puts Europe at a disadvantage. He noted that even if the 32 European countries would want to join forces to defend Ukraine, it is not now but in the next five years to step up their manufacturing of weapons that could match that of Russia.
Richard Shariff, a former Commander of NATO Forces, may have corroborated Rutte, the EU Secretary General’s claims when he disclosed that Russia produces 12,500 artillery shells and 5,500 drones every three months.
Keir Starmer, British Prime Minister, may have thought that Putin, who had served in the KGB, a security outfit, for 16 years, would fall for him when, as he prepares to send troops to Ukraine to enforce peace with Russia. As a prelude to beefing up the rare strength of the United Kingdom, UK, military to 100,000 in order to carry out his plans of sending troops to Ukraine, it may have informed why he has approved a signing bonus of £20,000 for ex-soldiers to return.
Putin may have read the handwriting on the wall as an open declaration of war on Russia that he had warned PM Starmer never to send troops to Ukraine as he threatens direct retaliation on the UK.
The French President Macron, whose country’s economy is in crisis, as it could no longer get free uranium from Niger and other mineral resources like gold, lithium, from Burkina Faso and Mali, all member countries of the Alliance for Sahel States which have taken over control of their resources and closed all French military bases in the region, may have followed the footsteps of the British Prime Minister Starmer by sending a message to the Russian leader to participate in the talk to restore peace between Russia and Ukraine but was told “to keep the peace to himself.”
There are indications that Trump, the American President, had given his word that he will not send US soldiers to Ukraine, an indication that he has beaten Europe to their own diplomatic game.
While the international community are waiting for the Russian President’s next line of action, he was said to have told those that care to listen: I will end this war of control of Ukraine on my own terms with no American soldier on ground, insisting that he cannot be “dictated to by Trump or the EU and the European leaders.”
Given the Russian President’s claims of defending Ukraine from US, UK, and EU control in the ongoing war which had resulted in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv, preparatory to taking over the whole of Ukraine, may have informed why it had used 574 drones and 40 hypersonic cruise missiles on Ukraine on August 20, 2025, barely two days after Macron, Merz, and other European leaders including Rutte, the EU Secretary General, and Ursula Von der Leyen, President, EU Commission, who had accompanied Zelenskyy to the US, had a meeting with Trump on how to end the tragic war with Russia.
The Russian drones and cruise missiles were said to have destroyed a ship trying to smuggle NATO weapons into Ukraine and many other things worth US $380 million as it consolidates its control of the Donetsk region.
While Trump, Starmer, and Macron appear to have taken the bold initiative to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which had dragged on for over three years, a Russian drone, on Thursday, August 21, 2025, had hit a US factory based in Ukraine that produces phones, electronics, and computers. Zelenskyy had said that the attack was deliberate to provoke the US President to enter into the war. It would be recalled that on Wednesday, August 20, 2025, an Iran-produced drone with a Chinese engine fired by Russia against Ukraine was said to have landed in eastern Poland where it had hit and scorched a cornfield in the village of Osiny in the eastern Lublin province, around 90 km from Belarus, one of the 15 republics in the old Soviet Union, without any damage.
Wladyslaw Kosiniak, the Polish Deputy Prime Minister and who also serves as the country’s Minister of Defence, had described it as a deliberate provocation, stressing that it bore similarities to cases where Russian drones flew into Lithuania and Romania at different times linked to efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Gen. Dariusz Malinowski, who believes that the Russian drone was a decoy, said it was designed for “self-destruct.”
Despite the unusual support which Ukraine is currently getting from the US, EU, and NATO, classified information indicates that Zelenskyy, who has been under intense pressure from the Ukrainian lawmakers to end the over three years of brutal war that has claimed thousands of lives, both military personnel and defenseless civilians appears to be considering “unconditional surrender” to Russia that may shock the EU, US, UK, and all the NATO member countries.
he bombing and destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructural facilities, a country pushed into war by the US, European leaders, and UK to fight Russia, may be the lot of Taiwan in the next 18 months or thereabouts as the same European leaders, EU, US, and the UK are still pushing the country to go into war with Xi Jinping-led China, a country with over two million active military personnel, which security experts have said would lead to its destruction.
